The Norton Commando Project

The bike is over at Motoparts getting one last good looking over to make sure I didn't flub anything up to badly. Then it's off to the out of province inspection and hopefully by Friday my girl will be on the road. The first trip of any distance is planned for that weekend. Only 85 km or so, but just enough to stretch her legs and make sure there's nothing truly amiss with the construction. Then I'll put around town to put a few more miles on it and then the gas milage test down to the doughnut mill is red deer for a true and honest break in.

I just did a semi-final tally of what this project has cost and was rather impressed with the figure. Doing 90% of the work myself really cut down cost, with labour cost only being the machining and help from Rosco at Motoparts to assemble the engine properly.
Not including the initial investment of $1500 for the bike, the total is currently $7411.34. Not too shabby.

It's rather funny. After doing the Honda Rebuild I had a couple illusions about how much it costs to rebuild a motorcycle. The major factor was that I didn't know the difference between a rebuild and a restoration. The Honda was a rebuild, which only cost about $500 past the cost of the bike. Not hard to do and a fantastic way to get my feet wet in the motorcycle world. This bike was intended to be a two year project with a final cost of $5000. Taking into account my naivety as to what i was actually getting into, the cost has actually fallen well below what a project like this would normally ring up. The time on the other hand has been a true accomplishment, Tessa and I moving to Vancouver at the end of this month has lit a fire under me like I could have never imagined. If memory serves, about 4 months ago the frame hadn't even been painted yet and I was meandering along with little bits of cleaning and such. Before I knew it I had a hard and fast time line that could not alter in any way. Low and behold, it looks like I'm going to pull it off. Maybe by the skin of my teeth, but pulled off none the less.

Over the next couple weeks I will document the travels of this newly born motorcycle for your enjoyment and hopeful inspiration. Then of course, the long trip to Vancouver will also be documented and beyond that, who knows. More projects, more adventures...

When I was a young lad my sister had a patch on her backpack with this cartoon on a big smiling, big bearded, big booted old man taking a huge step towards the foreground, and lettered around the image it said "keep on truck'n". I always loved that patch and it seems rather relevant to this post.

After a few finishing touches the bike was ready for it's first kick. I had never kicked over a bike of this size before and as you can see from the first video, It appears I may have been a little to tender with the whole process. Observe...

This pathetic attempt was not entirely my fault though. Eric noticed that the left side bowl was leaking quiet a lot from the gasket and we soon noticed that the bowl was a little warped and the gasket was merely filling a gap and not very well at that. We figured that this was causing some major atmosphere issues and after checking the left plug and confirming that it was dry as a bone, our assumptions were confirmed. No fuel was getting to the cylinder. A little disappointed I wished Eric a good night and thanked him for his help. Figuring that I would not be able to do anything, much less sleep I started thinking about what I could do. Then a thought came to me... "what would Rosco do?" So, i grabbed my lapping board and faced the bowl down to a perfect level. Easy as can be. I then placed the bowl back on the bike, called Tessa to come and record my next attempt in case that was the ticket to success.
After a small alteration, this is the next attempt.

Happy with that, I went to bed and slept soundly. The next day I went over to Motoparts to grab a couple things, like a balance hose and some barrel adjusters, as I was missing them the night before. The barrel adjusters gave me the tunability for balance the carbs and the balance hose did exactly what it was supposed to. I had the spiggots tapped off the night before because I figured no air getting in would be good. True in theory, but having that balance is apparently rather important.
After getting home, Eric and I gave it another go and this time it started up and ran like a champ, however we noticed that the left cylender was only kicking in after about 2000 RMP and deduced that another problem was afoot. I asked John about this and he said to take an air compressor to the idle jet as this was a common thing and something was probably just lodged in there. So off I go to work and give the carb a little cleaning. After bringing it home and assembling it I gave it a go but soon realized that the fuel line mount for the left carb was not tightening on as it should and found that the threads were there, but not deep enough to hold any real tension on the fuel line o-ring, thus causing a pretty hefty leak. All the fiddling I had done in the past couple days must have aggrivated the situation enough to push it over the edge, I wasn't too keen on starting up the bike with fuel pouring out of the line so I left it at that. Tomorrow I will be taking the bike over to Motoparts to have Rosco give it a good once over and make sure everything is in order. I will get the Carb fixed then and hopefully if there are no other major issues the bike will be ready for the out of province inspection by wednesday.

I'm sorry I didn't put up a video of the bike running. I had one but I think I may have lost it in the process of transfering it to my computer. I deleted a bunch of dud videos and have a feeling that it got caught in that pile. Not to worry though, we captured the first breath of life and there will be surely more to come. Ones with roads a

Well folks, it has been a very productive week, or weeks... not sure how long it has been to be totally honest. I just know that I haven't stopped

About a year ago when this whole project started, Tessa bought me a lovely motorcycle jacket for my birthday. Every once in a while I put it on and go "vroom vroom" quietly to myself, then take it off and hang it gently in the closet, promising to it that the wind will soon be beating against it's hide on the open road. Today I realized that the jacket should probably have some accessories to go with it... and I figure my safety is kind of important as well. So, today Tessa and I went out and I picked up some new gloves, a new helmet and some boots. Tessa also got some nice trinkets for me at Motoparts to make the whole ensemble complete.

Now, for the motorcycle stuff.

Remember when I said "if it doesn't seem right than it probably isn't"?  Yeah, it's easy to give advice but following it is a whole other matter.   While I was installing the gearbox I notice a 3 or 4 millimeter space between the cradle and the body of the gearbox.  I thought to myself, "that's odd, it must just be one of those things that have a lot of tolerance.  Nope, this was not right.  Not right at all.  In a fleeting moment of clarity that moment popped into my head while I was talking to John at Motoparts and he said... "Whoa, nope, you should have a spacer in there.  Here, this is the one you need".  So, a little unhappy with myself for being such a moron, I trundle home and assess what I need to do to install this little spacer.  Off comes the primaryassembly, chain, magneto, clutch assembly.. the whole bit.  Loosen the mounting bolts for the gearbox and the rear wheel.  Fit the little spacer in place which just happens to fit like a hot damn... odd...  and than put it all back together.  That was a good 5 hours worth of work because I didn't listen to my gut.  never again!

That being said, this was one of the last things I needed to do.  I got my tank back and it is all nice and coated on the inside so the evil ethonal in our gas won't eat a hole through it.  There were a couple little rubber pieces here and there that I had to get and install which is all done, and now the only thing left is the throttle and choke cable.  John said they should be in either tomorrow or tuesday and if they are not in by wednesday he will make me one.  Woot!  So I can pretty much guarentee the bike will have it's first cough into life this weekend or earlier.

Now remember this photo?

Well, that was a looooong time ago.  Jessie has come a long way since that day she rolled out of the Motoparts trailer and into my life.  Check it out...

You can right click and open the photo in a new tab to see the pull size image if you are so inclined.

So there she be.  THIS TIME, hopefully, the next blog will have a video of the first start.  Cross fingers!

Well folks, I must apologize for the long space between updates. You see it has been a rather busy time. Aside from the bike itself, a lot of time has been consumed by the planning and packing and sorting of the odds and ends we collect over time. With the move to Vancouver looming up ahead of us and space being at a premium, this process has become somewhat of an art. That aside, work has also been a little overwhelming. With the summer hitting, the bicycle shop has gone into full gear and there doesn't appear to be any chance of it letting up in the near future. On top of that we just implemented a new point of sale system, and that is... awesome...

Enough of all the crap though, this blog isn't about me. This is about the Norton, and a lot has happened since I last posted.

I started fiddling with the electrical because I have learned that it can be a rather time consuming step. Boy am I glad I did that. With no where to really start as far as loading the bike with wires, I figured it would be a good idea to make sure the main little bits were in good working order. Firstly the control units. I had taken an appraising glance at them when I got the bike but had not really dug into them to make they were functioning to their full potential. One of them had a broken thumb switch, so I knew I had to replace that and the other I soon discovered had a broken circuit board. I may have gone over this a while back, but my memory is often spotty and it is setting the scene for a good story. None the less, I discovered that some serious work needed to be done to these units. I ended up finding one on ebay for a decent price and so acquired it accordingly. When it arrived I was happy to discover that it had the replacement circuit board in it, but the thumb lever was a replica of the one I did not need to replace. Ah well, what can you do?.. I asked John if he had any and it would seem that the dual throw levers are rather hard to come by and he was fresh out. Back to ebay! I started my search with a more refined criteria of what I needed... a left hand control unit, complete or just the lever, it didn't matter, but it had to be that one. I found many many matches for this criteria, but the price was less than encouraging. A new production thumb lever was $70. Nope! A complete unit was around $60, doable, but there are always deals to be found, so I kept looking. ONe fine day I was scanning through google image search and I happened upon a photo of a small collection of units and a bundle of wire. These kinds of things always intrigue me so I followed the link and found it led me to an ebay listing. I don't know what the fellow had labeled the auction, but this listing had never come up in my searches before. It was at $23 with a day to go and included TWO left hand units, complete with brake assembly, as well as a right hand unit and a wiring harness. When it rains it pours! The bidding began. My bid stayed at $25 for a while and with half a day to go it jumped up to $49 when two other fellows threw a bid in. Nothing changed after that for a very long time. 5 minutes before it ended I resolved that I was not going to loose this auction because the wiring harness alone would cost be $175 and I wasn't even looking for one yet. So I put in my max bid for $200, hoping that the other guys would waste time trying smaller max bids until it was too late. There by bid sat at $51... counting down... One minute..... 30 seconds.... No activity.... 5 seconds.... This is where the bid usually starts to rapidly climb.... 1 second.... "congratulations, you won the auction". Wait, really? I just got the haul of a lifetime. shipping was $30 and the deal was done. Holy crap! The story is not done though. When the package arrived, everything looked as it should and the brake levers were in better condition than the ones I had to boot. Yay... wait, that's a mighty big pile of wires for a wiring harness... Oh, there's two. Well fuck!!!!!
Let the electrical begin!

I promptly cleaned up the units, picked through the pieces and assembled the best of the lot. ONe of the wiring harnesses was 100% complete, while the other was about 95% complete. Works for me! I figure there will be faulty plugs here and there and with the upgraded ignition system it would be rather handy having another loom to scavenge bits from.

Off to Motoparts to get loaded up on goodies.

Fast-forward a bit now because a lot of time was spend sussing out the situation and fitting things and snipping things, adding things, and tracing wires to where ever they ended up going.

I also picked up most of the cables for the bike so I could really get things going. My vision was starting to take shape and I didn't want anything to slow me down. A couple other bits and pieces had to be purchased along the way, but I ended up getting the majority of the electrical done. Turn signals work, horn works, high beam, low beam, running lights, brake lights... the whole bit. The only thing I have left to do now is wire up the ignition system and see if I have spark. Cross fingers for me, because this has to happen!

I also got oil lines and hooked all that up. Installed the primary drive system (after discovering that the magneto and stator were both kaput and needed to be replaced.. ouch), the rear fender, chain guard, and a bunch of other odds and ends. It's kind of neat, at this point there is only a couple more things I need to get and the bike will be ready to take that first roar into life.
All is not peaches and cream though. It's my own fault for lacking the foresight, but I did run into a rather large time constraint. My gas tank is fiberglass and so it needs to be coated so if there is ethanol in the gas it won't eat through the fiberglass. I took it into Motoparts to have Rosco do the coating. I would have done it myself but with my time constraints I really don't have the time to research and go through some trial and error to get it right. I know Rosco has the skills, so I entrusted him to get me going properly. Sadly, the coating takes 2 weeks to dry... That puts me right at the end of May before I can actually put gas in the tank. It is a slight blessing in disguise because with this time I can make sure I have done everything right. Double check all the work I did and get the bike properly tuned up for that first ride. I can still start it without the tank, but there will be no riding until it's all together. I will have to run a batch of oil through the engine to clean out any debris that may be left over from the build, as well as run it to settle the valve rockers and do some readjustment. Tune the carbs to it purrs as it should. All that can be done without a tank, and I think that will be the perfect amount of time to make sure I get it right.

Now, because a picture says a thousand words, here is... oh wait. I almost forgot that she has a name. Tessa has affectionately dubbed her Jezebel for reasons I think are rather obvious. I spend more time on that bike than I do anywhere else right now I thought it was funny and thought little of it for a while, but the name kind of stuck to me. I didn't want to call it Jezebel, but Jessie kept crawling into my mind. After a while I just sort of discovered that this motorcycles name was Jessie. So anyway, here are some pictures of Jessie in her current state.

There you have it.  By the next time I do a post I should hopefully be including a video of the first start.  Remeber guys, corss your fingers!  I really need this to work the first time.

So a couple days ago I got a call from John at Motoparts... "Your front rim is in." OH HELLS YEAH!

John called just as I got to work, so I had to go through the day shivering with excitement. As soon as I got off work I ran home, jumped in the car with Tessa and headed straight over to grab the rim. Sadly it was rather late in the day before we got home and the evening duties of dinner and dishes and such were required. I say required because the only thing on my mind was that rim sitting in the living room. My cat seemed to enjoy its company though. She climbed right in side, walked around inside it a few times then commenced the taste test...

The next day I also had a bit of a late day but I wasn't going to let that stop me. While some things were defrosting I laced up the rim and set it up in my stand. Now this is something good to remember in case you are ever in this situation... You CAN tension and true a wheel while making pasta sauce.

I didn't get it all the way up to tension so I left it for the evening and finished it up when I got home today.   It went nice and quick, with most of the work already done.  Then I went out and fitted it to the motorcycle.  IN doing so I realized that I was missing a left side spacer for the axle, but it's not integral to the wheel being installed until I actually want to ride it.  I'll grab one next time I head over to Motoparts.  For photo op purposes though, it suited just dandy.  
So here she is, wheeled!

Shit's gettin' real now folks.  It won't be much longer until It starts to get some colour

With the deadline drawing near, I am trying to spend every moment working on this ol' bike. Sadly there are times when I don't have the parts or something isn't fitting right and I need to get it fixed or replaced. At the moment I am waiting on the inner primary cover to get patched up (which should be monday or tuesday) and my front rim. The front rim could be any time really. John has been having some trouble with his shipments so we are holding our breaths for the hoop to arrive sooner than later. With that front rim it will really start to look like a bike. I could also ride it down a hill if I really really wanted to... after I get brake cables (mental note).

I did however run over to Motoparts last night to grab some pieces for my carbs. I figured I should take advantage of my down time and get all the things done I was going to do later. I learned that there can't be an order to do things when restoring a bike. You work on what is available and what wants to be worked on. Today, the carburetors wanted to be worked on.

Amazingly enough, a full gasket and o-ring kit, as well as new jets for both carbs ran me just under $40. Woot! There's a couple dollars I had assumed I would have to spend. The rebuild was a breeze, and before I knew it I was ready to throw them on the bike. I still have to get all my hoses and such, but no more surgery has to be done.

Viola, on the bike.

For the sake of reference.  The allan key that you need to tighten up the bolts from the manifold to the head needs to be altered a wheeeee bit if you are using a standard L-bend.  You have to cut down the short end to be about a cm long and the long end needs to be about 8 cm long.  I didn't measure, and the wrench is outside in my work shop.  I'd check but there is a wind storm standing outside waiting for me to open the door.  No no, not this time mr. windstorm, I'm wise to your tricks!
I did take a photo of the tool though and put it on my workshop manual for some sort pof size reference.

I also discovered that my right side Z plate was missing the threads that allowed me to mound my foot rest arm.  Way to go captain farmer dude who owned this bike before me.  I should have kept a tally of the things that were miffled on this bike.  Ah well, no harm done.  John lent me his heli-coil kit and voila, good as new.  Here it is all mounted up with the arm installed.  
Also, notice the little copper nut on the Z plate...  For the longest time I was trying to figure out what the nut was for.  It just kind of sat in my pile of nuts and bolts laughing at me but giving me nothing.  Then I started looking into the electrical side of things and noticed that the zener diode that regulates the charging voltage was mounted to the inside of the z plate.  Super cool in fact, it uses the aluminum z-plate as a heat sink to disperse excess energy from the alternator.  With the installation of the z plate being on my horizen I figured it would be a good idea to mount that up so it wouldn't bite me in the ass later on.  WAIT FOR IT!!!!  It's got a copper shell that has a copper bolt that probably should use a copper nut.  BAM!  Copper nut, the day is mine!   Anyway, that's what the copper nut is for.
Please disregard the super ugly inspection cover.  That is going to be replaced in the near future.

Visit again soon, things are just starting to get exciting!

Man, when things start rolling, they just go!

This weekend I got it into my head that I should start assembling with some true ernest. On Friday I went down to Motoparts to grab a few little things I needed. New bearings for the rear wheel, new swing arm bushings, some o-rings for isolating the headlamp ear and a few other nick nacks that I had noticed I was missing. When I got home I installed the double row bearing into the drum/sprocket and put in the new swing arm bushings and called it a night. This morning I dove right in up to the elbows. I got the other bearings installed into the hub, so the rear wheel was totally complete and ready to rock. I then reassembled the fork with the new o-rings and proper spacers... whooeee, what a beautiful sight.
Now I know you're wondering, where's the pics? Process Cory, we want to see the process! Well I have to admit that I got a little carried away and forgot to document the steps as I went. It's ok though, I made sure to take one photo at the completion of my work today. Since there is little visual aids, I will try to explain as best I can what I did.

I got a little ahead of myself with my chain of events. I didn't actually install the rear wheel and fork just yet because I had bigger fish to fry.

Before I installed the new bushings, the swingarm had a slight bit of side to side play, and the bushings slid in and out of their seats with little to no effort. I put it together because I had time to kill and wanted to see how it would look, and if the bushings were in fact junk. After I assembled with the old bushings and noticed the definite side to side play I was sure they had to be replaced. One thing I have learned in my short stint restoring motorcycles is that if there is a little side to side play that you can feel from pulling the swing arm back and forth, it feels like you are riding a rope when you actually get on the bike. I had that happen with the little honda I did last and after installing new bushings in that, the world became a beautiful shiny place where riding in a straight line was a reality. NOW, because the norton has a few extra parts to it when it comes to the swing arm assembly, I had no interest in seeing if this theory rang true with this bike as well. New bushings, no question!

With the swing arm assembly done, I made sure that my rear isolastic mount was good and solid, then installed my front isolastic mount. At this point I recalled some research I had done about installing the big heavy bits.... like the engine, and stopped to assess my situation. Word on the street is that it is very hard to install the gearbox AFTER you install the engine, so I took that to heart and did a dry fit of the gearbox into it's cradle. With that in place I snugged now the bolts just enough so it wouldn't move and stood back to assess my situation again. Another tidbit of info I gleaned from many different sources on installing a norton engine solo, is to do it with the bike laying on it's side. The engine weighs a good bit more than the frame and so the logical route would be to (in essence) install the frame onto the engine. I laid out a shwack load of padding so I would scratch up any of my hard work and yet again assessed my situation. After bringing the engine out from my basement to the garden shed (which has proven to a fantastic workshop for this project) I felt confident that I could lay the frame down and position the engine into the free space where it should be in the frame, then adjust the engine into the frame from there. Tally ho! it begins. With the frame down and the engine sitting in the general postion I wanted, I used some small pieces of wood to adjust the height and angle of the engine until the hole lined up to my satisfaction. I then adjusted the frame a little here and there to line up the holes further and slipped the mounting bolts in.

Done... Like 10 minutes later, done. That was WAY easier than I ever could have hoped.

I then tipped the bike upright and reinstalled the bolts in their proper orientation if they were in backwards. Using Rosco and John's advice, I used engine sealant on the threads as a sort of lock tight, which apparently is the cats ass as far as keeping the bolts good and tight, as well as making removal 40 years down the road a breeze.
Then, with everything installed correctly I torqued all the bolts down and stood back to survey my handy work.

At this point I installed the fork and rear wheel. I also installed the two Z-plates and the battery trey. I did this more to see what it would look like, and was happily impressed by how good it all started to look.

And this is how it looks...

Pretty snazzy eh?

I still have a long ways to go, but it's starting to look like a motorcycle.

With the rear wheel built and the front rim on order I felt like I needed to keep this ball rolling and get as much done as I could. It turns out there is plenty to do! I took apart the rear brake assembly, cleaned, painted and reassembled. I just realized I didn't take any pictures but that's ok, it just looks like a rear drum brake only shiny.... Now that i think about it I really want to take a picture and post it because it looks some frikken nice. I'll do that in my next post.

I also did a really cool cleaning of the oil tank. Ideally the oil tank should be spotless shiny metal on the inside, and mine is not. It wasn't bad but there were little spots of rust and that just wouldn't do. The answer? Reverse electrolysis...

It's really quite simple. You mix a bunch of baking soda into some water and fill the thing you want to clean with the solution (which needs to be metal). Then you find something made of steel (i used an old wrench) and dangle it into the solution making sure that it isn't touching any part of the tank. The wrench worked well because a little twist of plastic coated clothes hanger did the job nicely for mounting. Then you hook a battery charger up with the negative lead hooked onto the tank and the positive lead to the chunk of iron. Turn on the battery charger to 12V and let it sit and bubble away. After 8 hours or so your wrench should be covered in rust and if there's more to go, clean off the rust and do it again. After a while the inside of the tank will be spotless.  After that was done I gave it a nice coat of paint... or rather a couple and there is another coat to go, but I have to sleep sometime right?  Anyway, this is how it will look when it's all done and ready for mounting.

I also did a little more dry fitting of things to make sure I remembered how they went on. It turns out I remembered how the battery box was supposed to go. Yay me!

Well folks, it has been a crazy couple of weeks. I just had a 30th birthday that my lovely lady planned for a couple of months including my mom flying in from ohio, renting out my favorite karaoke bar and a potluck summer with every single person I love. It was grande! It also left me a little worn down but that didn't stop me from digging in to this project elbow deep with both hands.

I purchased a rear rim (sadly the front wasn't in stock but will be in a week or so), spokes for both wheels, tires, tubes and rim tapes. With a little time I had set aside I was able to build of the rear wheel and it turned out beautiful. I got a little monkeyed with the spoke pattern but figured it out promptly. I have been building bicycle wheels for more years than I car to count so I figured I had it under control. Motorcycle rims also have a pretty idiot proof method of directing the holes from the rimes to identify which spoke goes where and where it comes from. The trick it to get the cross pattern correct. Once that was all sorted, there was very little excitement, just slowly tensioning, dishing, pulling out a little hop, de-tensioning, tensioning, repeat... etc. It was really quite fun and I can't wait for the front rim to come in so I can get that one build up.

I also checked in with John at Motoparts to see if my upper isolastics were in good order, and he happily informed me that they are good as new, and in fact are probably new. Looks like the fellow that owned this bike before me wasn't a total troglodyte and put a little good into it. With that knowledge in hand I picked up a few little parts that I needed to mount the transmission cradle (upper isolastics mount the cradle to the frame at the rear of the bike) and with the help of a friend that trundled in from Prince George for easter (Mirco) I mounted up the cradle and officially started the assembly process.

I had a little time this evening so I thought I would finish polishing up the Z-braces and see how they looked on the frame. I also dry fitted the shocks to see how they looked and was very very pleasantly surprised at how good the bike looks with just a few things thrown on it. I can't wait to actually start the assembly. I still need to get a fre things before I can mount the swing arm to the cradle, but those should be in hand by the end of the week. I figure I will have a bike I can sit on by the end of the month. I might even have the engine sitting in there just for good measure

One last thing before I get my hands dirty again.  A couple days ago when i was at Motoparts to pick up a few things, John invited everyone who was in the sotre to come down and see his "motorcycle room".  I really had no idea what to expect, but excitedly agreed that it would be a very good idea.  Upon entering the room, the only thing I could think was that a museum would kill for his collection.  Really the most beautiful collection of bikes I had ever heard of, let alone seen.  Some of these bikes people are lucky to see once in their lifetime...  For example, this Vincent cooly sitting at the end of the row.


I'll be back soon.  You can count on it!

With the engine being all done, the decision as to my next attack path became quite prominent.  I figured that I should start from the ground up, or rather from the bones out.  Let's paint the frame.
I did a lot of research on this because I wanted to make it as cost effective as possible, but didn't want to skimp on the look and longevity of the paint.  There was the obvious choice of powder coating, sadly this was going to be a $500 hit that I just couldn't take with my time line.  Dollars and minutes need to work together very closely if I intend on having this bike done for July.

I ended up finding a great place that creates 2K overcoats spray bombs for $30 a can.  Still very pricey for a can of spray paint, but well worth the price.

Here is a photo of the frame with a 2K primer coat on.

With that out of the way I started on the over coat.  I sadly took the hanging jog down by the time I took the picture, but you'll get the idea.

After this, I had enough paint left to do a lot of the other small items like the battery box and the head steady.  So as of now, I have all the required things painted and ready for assembly.  
With this all done the game plan problme came back to me.  I started polishing things and cleaning things trying to find the right angle to start from.  After a bit I came to the conclusion that I would really like to SEE some progress so I decided to strt getting the wheels ready.  Money?  Crap, new rims and spokes will be $300 per wheel.  Ok, i can work around that, it had to be done anyway so it wasn't totally unexpected.  
A couple days later I got a call from a group that I helped build a community bike shop for up north a ways.  They have fallen behind in their project production so they asked that I come up for a week and help them catch up.  Just what the doctor ordered!  Enough money from this job to get my wheels up and running with money left over for tires.  On top of that it will give me a week away from thinking about it and I will be able to come back with a clear head and a renewed drive.

I'll see you in a couple weeks when I have some real progress to show you.